Category

Published on

Abstract

Class warm up activity to be done in pairs. Students evaluate each of 8 terms and rank them from lowest to highest value. Some terms may have equal value.

I have found that this is surprisingly challenging for most of my students. Bonus points can be given to the first team to complete the task correctly. No calculators allowed!

It is a good idea to use an example ranking task such as this before assigning more difficult ranking tasks that relate to the course content. This drill helps students understand what a ranking task is, and helps them remember some mathematical functions that are useful.

I'd love to hear from you if you use any of my materials in class! I have more that I can share, if there is interest. Send me a note through nanoHUB, or to tfaltens@purdue.edu.

Bio

Dr. Tanya Faltens created this ranking task when she taught Materials Science and Engineering courses at Cal Poly Pomona. She is currently at Purdue University, and is the Educational Content Creation Manager for the Network for Computational Nanotechnology.

Credits

Inspired by a workshop on Ranking Tasks by Shane Brown at the ASEE Zone IV Conference in Reno, NV, in 2010.

Get Involved

Legal

nanoHUB.org, a resource for nanoscience and nanotechnology, is supported by the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.